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BLOWBACK: RECENT TERRORISM IN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY by Paul W. Rea, Ph.D. “The first casualty of war is truth.”
In the weeks ensuing the horrifying events of September 11, 2001, Americans have probably watched more “serious” TV than ever before. However, much of the coverage on Fox, CNN and the networks has amounted to little more than flag waving and beating the drums for war. Susan Sontag, the grand dame of media critics, was among the first to spot this problem: “The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy…. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public” (p.32). In a seldom-noticed irony, while the country is undertaking operation “Eternal Freedom” in Afghanistan, American democracy has been unraveling at home. On airwaves dominated by highly paid, late-middle-aged white males, there has been little of the debate that this country saw as recently as a decade ago before the Gulf War. This time around “Patriotism,” “the need for national unity,” or “respect for the victims” have often silenced the debate so essential to a healthy democracy. In Congress, only Barbara Lee of Oakland, CA and James McDermott of Washington state have found the courage to question administration war policies, and they have received widespread scorn. Frankly, I feel a bit intimidated myself, but what follows needs to be said. Moreover, in their understandable shock and outrage few Americans seem aware that they have been relinquishing more power to Washington than at any other time in American history. Only an occasional courageous voice, such as that of Wendy Kaminer of The American Prospect, has seemed “troubled when I see too much trust in government.” Though this concern is very much in the American tradition, the present climate of fear has squelched such healthy skepticism about Big Government. This brief examination of foreign policy abuses certainly supports the need for such skepticism. On the other hand, no amount humiliation, repression, impoverishment, or exploitation can justify the murder of 5,000 innocent people. II. Common Explanations for Anti-Americanism:The targets of the attacks, as many commentators immediately noted, were blatantly symbolic: the World Trade Center was an apt symbol for corporate globalization, the Pentagon an apt symbol of American military power--or militarism. None of the media pundits, however, seem to have asked the obvious question: why would people feel so threatened by corporate globalization? Though consistently underreported in the American media, the fact is that dissatisfaction with corporate globalization is growing: the demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 that drew 50,000 people, while the ones in Genoa in 2001 drew 250,000 protesters, the great majority of them peaceful. Despite media dismissals here, “over there” the news is out that globalization actually fosters a worldwide class struggle between the “haves” and “have nots.” Increasing skepticism about corporate globalization, coupled with the absence of other positive visions for real economic progress, leaves the world’s poor more vulnerable to the emotional appeals of fundamentalisms, Islamic or otherwise. With all this attention to symbolism, it is also revealing to note that the media did not investigate the symbolism of Sept. 11 itself, even though a communiqué from bin Laden mentioned this very date. Significantly, perhaps, it was on September 11, 1683 that the previously unbeatable armies of Islam met final defeat outside the gates of Vienna. As Christopher Hitchens notes in The Nation, “The date marks the closest that proselytizing Islam ever came to making itself a superpower by military conquest” (p.9). The selection of this date, then, may point to the acute sense of defeat, marginalization and military humiliation felt by many in the Islamic world, a sense that is exploited by terrorist groups. Further high-tech military humiliation, especially when done by a rich Superpower against one or more of the poorest societies in the world, has already begun to intensify this smoldering rage. In other attempts to “frame” the
newly perceived threats of terrorism, two additional hypotheses have entered
the public mind. The first, which involves “what we represent,” was first
articulated by Benjamin Barber in a well-researched book, Jihad vs. McWorld
(1995). Barber’s analysis holds that Islamic fundamentalists are inherently
opposed to the values of modern Western secular society, including democracy,
free speech, and full rights for women. This viewpoint essentially implies
that many Islamic fundamentalists hate us for representing these values,
which seems true enough. But as we shall see, America also represents a
lot more than just modern, secular, democratic values in the minds of increasing
numbers of Muslims.
This good-vs.-evil mentality also manifests in an ingrained habit of singling out the violence against civilians perpetrated by non-government groups as “terrorism” but framing the violence against civilians perpetrated by certain governments--such as those of Israel and our own--as merely “retaliatory” or “just.” Matthews also observes that Americans are hated because ”we are the symbol of their weakness,” meaning that our policies, both diplomatic and military, have often been insensitive or condescending at best--and are often, especially in the Mid East, perceived as arrogant. Such perceptions inevitably move us to the question of “what has our government been doing?” This is the question that the mainstream media have shown neither the courage nor the insight to explore. To add heft to this question, Chalmers Johnson, the author of Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of the American Empire, advances an interesting thesis: that the suicidal assassins of September 11 did not so much attack “America” as they retaliated for decades of American foreign policy abuses. III. Opposition to Nearly All the Progressive Initiatives on the World Scene.In attempting to account for the upsurge in anti-American feelings, one needs to consider the recent stances on a number of issues that most countries deem important. Jessica Matthews again points out the “arrogant unilateralism” of recent U.S. foreign policy, which stands in opposition to at least 15 treaties sought by most other nations. These include the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol dealing with global warming, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear testing, the Biological Weapons Convention prohibiting germ warfare, and the Land Mines Treaty. To the disbelief of our European allies, the U.S. has been the only democracy to do oppose these measures. How can a country justify being “for” land mines, one might ask? The answer is that the Pentagon finds them useful, and American companies, which make some of the best in this deadly business, don’t want to lose the sales. From the start the Bush administration has trumpeted its intention to break the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in order to build a souped-up version of Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile shield. And, only two weeks before Sept.11, the American delegation, with Secretary of State Colin Powell conspicuously missing, had walked out of the UN Conference on Racism and Xenophobia. Our opposition to progressive proposals, Matthews adds, often places us (usually along with Israel) in alliance with a small group of countries that Washington labels as “rogue states”: Libya, Iraq, and North Korea. Amplified by the “go-it-alone” rhetoric of the Bush administration, stances so out of step with the contemporary world have shocked and angered otherwise friendly nations. Other governments have reacted angrily to the American habit of using the United Nations when the U.N. can serve its purposes, as in the Gulf War, but disregarding the U.N., as well as international law, when they might inhibit American objectives--as in the case of the decision to bomb Serbia and Kosovo in 1999. To make this essentially American intervention appear multinational, the Clinton administration turned to NATO, which it could much more easily shape to its ends. Similarly, the Bush administration bypassed the U.N. after September 11, again turning immediately to NATO as it began to erect a facade of multilateralism for what, so far, is essentially another high-altitude, no-casualties American bombing campaign. IV. A Virtual Blackout of Recent History:For many years thoughtful observers of American culture have noted a tendency toward “American Innocence,” meaning that Americans both tend to remain “innocent” in the sense of ignorant about what their government is doing overseas, and also tend to imagine that their motives are pure and noble. America, after all, has long been blessed by God. The American style of waging war may reinforce this illusion of innocence, as Lapham wryly observes: “The heirs to a great military estate can afford to hire servants (some of them human, most of them electronic) to do the killing. Money in sufficient quantity washes out the stains of cruelty and greed, transports its proprietors to always higher levels of snow-white innocence” (p.31). Beyond the usual human resistance to self-reflection, this culturally conditioned assumption of our “innocence” makes it difficult for us to take a hard look in the mirror. Thus few Americans have asked the question, “I wonder what our government might have been doing to make so many people want to bomb our house instead of the neighbors’ house”? Such a national discussion would be considered “unpatriotic,” and the media would lose advertisers. It would also uncover some fairly nasty actions. When writer Gore Vidal quipped that the memory of the American public extends back about 72 hours, he was pointing to the fact that we Americans are among the least historically inclined peoples in history. The History Channel, of course, has long tilted strongly toward military rather than political history, toward overt rather than covert actions. Since the September tragedy the TV documentaries have mainly provided background on Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or Islamic fundamentalism, touching only superficially, if at all, on the American covert actions that have, by fomenting hatred, contributed to the rise in terrorism. Let’s take a hard look, then, at what our government has been doing in those countries most relevant to the present international crisis. Afghanistan: A Classic Case of Blowback: Despite all the recent stories and maps in Time and Newsweek, few Americans understand that Afghanistan provides a characteristic case of American meddling that has backfired in a major way. In a shortsighted attempt to foil the Russian attempt to control Afghanistan, presidents Reagan and Bush secretly funneled fully $3 billion to moujahedeen (foreign Muslim) fighters in that country, whose numbers included Osama bin Laden and whose soldiers later helped to form and finance the Taliban. Bin Laden came to prominence in a rebel force financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.).After the Russians withdrew, however, the Americans also departed, leaving the country to descend into a five-year civil war and making no effort to promote economic development. As a result, moujahedeen brigades and the Taliban have found a more ample supply of fatherless or orphaned impoverished recruits to swell their ranks (LA Times 10.15.01). And, in a final blowback, the American Stinger missiles that turned the tide against the Russians are now feared by American military, complicating the helicopter and ground searches necessary to “smoke out” bin Laden and al Qaeda. Greece: Two Much-Resented Interventions: Since Greece may be the most anti-American among the NATO nations, it is instructive to look at the historical reasons for this stance. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 demanded $400 million for military intervention in Turkey and especially Greece, where American technology, including napalm that was dropped on villages, helped to restore the unpopular monarchy. This unpopular intervention led Greece into a bloody civil war (Zinn p.426). Later, in the l960s, the U.S. supported a military police state that brutalized much of the Greek citizenry. Since 1975, when the Greeks threw out the generals and angry Athenians nearly trashed the U.S. embassy, many Greeks have (perhaps unjustly) blamed America for this unseemly chapter in their history. Most cultures have much longer historical memories than we Americans typically do; we Americans forget this fact at our peril. Israel: America’s Chosen People: Since the military and diplomatic sponsorship of Israel is clearly a major point of contention in the Islamic world, it is worth looking at how this relationship came about. In 1948 a C.I.A. report stated that if the U.S. did not fashion Israel into a bastion in the region, it could “face the possible loss of petroleum resources of the Middle East (comprising 40% of the world’s resources” (Chomsky Fateful Triangle p.19). Later, U.S. planners came to believe that the Israelis, as natural foes of Islamic nationalism and fundamentalism, could help to halt their spread. However, exactly the opposite has been the result. Israel’s formation out of Palestinian lands, its repression of displaced Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and its aggressive policies have all antagonized its neighboring countries, many of which are the ones with the oil.In the long term, Israel’s most impressive military victories have proven highly problematic for them and for us. The Islamic nationalist movement emerged and intensified after the 1967 and 1973 wars, in which Israel, using U.S. military hardware, was able to humiliate Islamic nations and seize new territory from them. In their military prowess, the Israelis planted dragons teeth that, over time, have sprouted into armed enemies. Frequent footage of tanks blowing away rock-throwing boys does not play well. Since the Israelis use a lot of weapons made in, and provided by, the U.S.A., their actions further aggravate anti-American feelings among Muslims. Egypt: Planting the Seeds of Terrorism: In the early 1950s, Gamal Abdel Nasser, a military strongman, launched a movement called “Pan Arab Socialism.” When Nasser was humiliated by Israeli forces in the 1967 War, religious fundamentalism began to fill the vacuum left by the decline of Nasser’s secular philosophy. In Egypt, a country of massive poverty and political repression, Islamic fundamentalism has long found a receptive mass audience. Egypt illustrates a pattern that applies to other countries in the Mid East: a poor and repressed population resents American aid to a regime that denies civil rights, and the media, unable to criticize the government, blames America for the many of country’s problems.Even if exaggerated, American complicity is perceived as very real. Mid East historian Bernard Lewis reports that he often hears comments like these: “You Americans don’t regard us as full human beings; you make deals with tyrants that you would never live under yourselves” (“Charlie Rose” 10.18.01). In the case of Egypt, Washington gives about $1.3 billion a year to Hosni Mubarak government, which crushes dissent. It is not coincidental, then, that many terrorists come from Egypt, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the founders of Islamic Jihad and a major strategist for Al Qaeda. These three factors--humiliation, poverty, and repression--have proved to be key factors in the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. And in nearly every case, the United States has been a key player in the making of this explosive mix. Sudan, Egypt’s neighbor to the south, also experienced American the arbitrary abuse of American power when, in 1998, Bill Clinton sent Cruise missiles slamming into the main pharmaceutical plant. Though Clinton claimed that the plant had made the explosives used to bomb American embassies in Africa, later tests by Swiss experts showed that American intelligence was probably faulty. But that did not help the millions of people in Sudan who had to go without medicines. Even Milton Bearden, the former C.I.A. Station Chief in Afghanistan who had worked with bin Laden, has spoken of “the arrogance of committing an act of war against a friendly Islamic state” (“Front Line” 10.12.01). Iran: Meddling with Tragic Consequences: In the early 1920s, following the collapse of the Islamic Ottoman Empire in World War I, the British Foreign Office grabbed Jordan, Iraq, and part of Iran, arousing the usual resentments that occur when a more powerful nation seizes a less powerful one. After World War II, with European economies in ruin, the U.S. exploited a similar power vacuum. Forgetting its own history as an exploited colony, the U.S. actively assumed the role of the dominant colonial power in the Mid East. Exxon replaced British petroleum.In 1953 the democratic National Front brought Mohammed Mossadeq to power in Iran. However, when Mossadeq announced his intent to nationalize the oil in his own country, the C.I.A. and secret British intelligence orchestrated riots that forced the resignation of Mossadeq and imposed the unpopular Shah on the Iranian people (Wright pp.9-11). The history of the C.I.A. suggests why it was especially reactive to petroleum issues: former president George Bush, oilman and banker, ran the Agency during the 1970s, and William Casey, former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, headed it during the 1980s. The C.I.A., like U.S. foreign policy more generally, has been strongly oriented to controlling resources for oil companies. In Iran, then, American leaders sacrificed democracy for oil. M.I.T. analyst Noam Chomsky notes that “one result of the C.I.A. backed coup that restored the Shah in 1953 was to transfer 40% of Iranian oil from British to American hands” (Fateful Triangle p.19). This oil grab might have fueled the American economy, but it proved very costly to the Iranian people: for a quarter century the Shah’s Saviki, or secret police, tortured and killed any suspected opponents to his illegitimate regime. Throughout the repression the Shah was increasingly resented as a puppet of the U.S. interests that had brought him to power. During this period fundamentalist Mullahs coined the term “The Great Satan,” a term for the U.S. that since has gained alarmingly widespread popularity throughout the Islamic world. In November 1979, a popular uprising overthrew the Shah. Fundamentalist students occupied the American Embassy, taking 52 hostages who were later released. In reaction to the Shah’s Westernization, the fundamentalist revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini successfully associated the U.S. with everything that Iranians hated about the Shah. The U.S. and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since l979. Saddam’s Iraq: From Friend to Fiend: As the U.S. recovered from its “loss” of oil-rich Iran, it began to cultivate a cozy relationship with Iran’s hostile neighbor, oil-rich Iraq. During the 1980s the U.S. sold weaponry to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, including some of the very technologies that Saddam used to make chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was the same brutal dictator that he is today, but Washington supported him because at that moment he seemed useful against its enemies, the Iranians and the Soviets. During most of the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. provided Iraq with satellite photos of Iranian positions. However, toward the end of the war, in an abrupt about face, the Reagan administration began to support Iran. At the Pentagon a military aid named Colin Powell signed a top secret order that, in complete violation of the arms embargo on Khomeini’s regime, sent about 4,000 anti-tank missiles to Iran. But when Iran, encouraged by these new missiles, made a move on oil-rich Kuwait, Reagan switched back to supporting Saddam (Sudetic p.49). In short, Washington toyed with a deadly war that claimed the lives of over 200,000 humans, appearing unprincipled except for two: the expansion of American power and the control of Mid Eastern oil.When, desperate to pay off the costs of the war, Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, Washington’s response was both swift and massive. To prepare the public for another, much larger intervention, President Bush repeatedly demonized Saddam, frequently comparing him to Hitler, but Bush the oilman never spoke about oil. With very little critique from the press he persuaded the American public that Operation Desert Storm, like all of America’s wars, was to be about “freedom and democracy.” Even when an easy victory left Saddam in power and restored the repressive Kuwaiti royal family, few seemed to question Bush’s rhetoric. If most of the American public believed Bush, much of the Islamic world did not; it was becoming well acquainted with the contradictions between Washington rhetoric and Mid East realities--especially when it came to using tyrants for self-serving ends. In the eyes of many Muslims, the six-week Gulf War felt like another humiliating defeat for an Islamic nation. To make matters worse, the American military used the Iraqis as guinea pigs for several new military technologies that were not necessary to defeat Saddam: laser-guided “smart” bombs, fuel/air bombs that resemble small nuclear explosions, uranium-tipped shells that left radioactive residues over much of southern Iraq, and “earth penetrator” bombs that helped to destroy the Iraqi Army in its bunkers. Approximately 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were either buried alive beneath the sand or blown to bits in the carpet bombing. Throughout the “air” (never “bombing”) campaign, there were frequent reports of civilian casualties that the Pentagon dismissed as “collateral damage.” Despite all the talk of “surgical strikes,” 30% of American bombs missed their targets--and these often proved deadly to people in houses, schools and hospitals. After the Iraqi army had fled from
Kuwait, completing the stated purpose of the war, American planes pursued
the Iraqis in a needless slaughter while they were in full retreat on the
roads. General Robert McCafferty, former drug czar under President Clinton,
was widely believed to have ordered atrocities after the cease-fire. Saddam
had never been a favorite among his neighbors, but the sight of a Superpower
kicking around a fourth-rate power evoked unprecedented sympathy for him
in the Arab world. As a final outrage, Bush urged Saddam’s Shi’ites Muslim
opponents in the south to revolt, but then left them hanging, unsupported.
Soon enough, they were slaughtered by Saddam’s elite Republican Guard,
which had not been bombed to smithereens These unnecessary carnages, though
scarcely covered in mainstream American media, did not play well on TV
screens throughout the Islamic world.
It was the 10 year embargo on Iraq’s oil sales, though, that has caused far more suffering and has led to an even bigger public relations disaster. Impartial observers from the Harvard Medical School and other sources have painted a grim picture of roughly 5,000 Iraqi children a month dying from the lack of medical supplies or clean drinking water. The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates the death toll to exceed 1 million out of Iraq’s population of 23 million. Such cruel and unconscionable policies, especially when enforced over such a long period, have even angered Saddam’s neighbors, most of whom knew him for the brutal tyrant that he is. While the U.S. is not the only country to support the sanctions, it has been the most adamant about their continuance. One Iraqi, a computer programmer now living in Florida, speaks of how the Iraqi see the embargo: “In their eyes, it was a genocide. And people do not forget a genocide” (Sudetic 48). Saudi Arabia: Corruption and Collaboration: If American polices against Iraq illustrate “underdog” sympathies, those toward Saudi Arabia again illustrate resentments over American support of governments that repress their own people. In the Islamic world, the American support of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is often likened to the earlier support for the Shah of Iran. Feeling powerless under the jackboot of their own governments, unable to act out against their immediate oppressors, subjugated peoples often direct their anger outward. They target the U.S., which serves as the banker and backer for many highly repressive governments, such as those in Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.Like the Egyptians, the Saudi rulers have tried to placate unrest by allowing a fundamentalist takeover of the educational system: two-thirds of Ph.Ds granted in Saudi Arabia are in religious studies. But this is a dangerous ploy, for individual within a young population mis-educated in a fundamentalist, dogmatic way becomes more apt to adopt the full “true-believer” mentality of the terrorist. At present, Osama bin Laden is a massively popular hero in Saudi Arabia. These governments may be buying time at a very high price. Saudi Arabia would make a tempting target for terrorists intent on damaging its royal family or the Western nations that depend on its oil. According to seasoned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, a C.I.A. study concluded that “only a small amount of explosives could take the oil fields off line for two years” (39). To forestall such an attack, the Saudi regime has been paying ”hundreds of millions in what amounts to protection money to the fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it” (p.35). LA Times columnist Robert Sheer puts matters more bluntly: “The evidence is overwhelming that it is the incredibly rich Saudis, far more than the incredibly poor Afghans, who are responsible for the emergence of a militant and violent variant of Islam that has infected the Muslim world” (10.16.01). In a savage irony, then, some of the money that Americans pay the Saudis for oil ends up as “protection money” supporting the likes of Osama bin Laden, who see the ongoing American military presence on Saudi soil as a sacrilege or cultural insult. In addition, the Saudi royal family skims outrageous “commissions” off Saudi high-tech arms procurements such as F-15 fighters. These malpractices probably have a lot to do with the refusal of the Saudi monarchy to run the bank-account “traces” recently requested by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. Why, one asks, would the Bush administration not be more assertive with the Saudis? Aside from the vast amount of oil the U.S. receives from them, the answer is that they are clearly interlocked with American political elites--and at the highest levels. In one example, Hersh discloses that “Halliburton, the Texas based oil-supply business formerly owned by Vice President Dick Cheney, was operating a number of subsidiaries in Saudi Arabia” (p.37). In another case of passing interest, former President Bush is now active in the Carlisle Investing Group, which has done business with the bin Laden family (Wall Street Journal10.27.01.) It is one thing for the New York Times to editorialize, rightly, that “Washington will overlook abuses to keep oil flowing” (10.14.01); it would be another for “the national newspaper of record” to actually report on such cozy relationships among interlocking elites. Indonesia: Another Involvement in Genocide: Indonesia, the most populous Islamic country, was somehow expected to provide little opposition to the bombing of Afghanistan. After all, American advisors were once again helping to train the Indonesian army, which trails an atrocious record of human rights violations. Surely, thought the Bush administration, the new President Megawati Sukarnoputri would not do something rash like calling for a halt to the bombing. But she did just that, in part, no doubt, to appease an angry Muslim population that was starting to storm the streets.Again, a brief look at earlier U.S. involvements would is illuminating. In 1965, the C.I.A. assisted the overthrow of a leftist government and helped to bring to power a military junta led by General Suharto. During the l970s the U.S. helped to train and equip the Indonesian military, which was terrorizing country’s population, killing tens of thousands a year. The slaughter went on right through the term of Jimmy Carter, “the human rights president.” In the 1990s, according to historian Howard Zinn, “The United States continued to supply lethal arms to some of the most vicious regimes in the world. Indonesia had a record of mass murder, having killed perhaps 200,000 out of a population of 700,000 in its invasion and occupation of East Timor. Yet the Clinton administration approved the sale of F-16 fighter planes and other assault equipment to Indonesia” (p.638). At the time The Boston Globe analyzed the sordid politics of the deal: “The arguments present by senators solicitous of Suharto’s regime--and of defense contractors, oil companies and mining concerns doing business with Jakarta--made Americans seem a people willing to overlook genocide for the sake of commerce” (9.11.94). Is it surprising, then, that and anti-American sentiments might sprout from such blood-drenched soil? As never before, then, Americans must try to understand the roots of Islamic rage. In addition to the routine support of repressive governments and the sponsorship of corporate globalization, pervasive American militarism is a central aggravation. International law expert Richard Falk makes it clear that “the high-tech dominance achieved by US power, so vividly expressed in the pride associated with the ‘zero casualties’ in the 1999 NATO war over Kosovo, has given to the peoples of the world a choice between poverty and subjugation, on the one hand, and vindictive violence on the other” (p.15). Pakistan: Caution and Principles Thrown Out the Window: Deemed essential as launching pad for ground operations against the Taliban, Pakistan is ruled by President Pervez Musharraf, a general leading another repressive military regime. Prior to the terrorism crisis, the U.S. had placed Pakistan under sanctions for human rights violations and detonating nuclear weapons. However, the Bush administration quickly bargained away these appropriate restraints as it demanded cooperation from the Musharraf. Once again, the U.S. left itself open to charges of hypocrisy by cutting deals with dictators in order to launch Operation “Eternal Freedom.”Since many Pakistanis have close connections with the Taliban, it is not surprising that public sentiment in Pakistan has tended to run strongly against the deal made by Musharraf. A “60 Minutes II” segment showed young Pakistanis at an elite military academy who were bitterly critical of U.S. policies toward Israel and other nations in the Mid East (9.12.01). Since these were sons of the elite speaking excellent English, one concludes that Islamic fundamentalism is not limited to the poor or middle classes. In another story, reporter Lally Weymouth of Newsweek: met with young diplomats, who were also strongly anti-American. Unsettled by this experience, she concluded that these young Pakistanis, all of them from backgrounds of privilege, were simply “badly informed”--overlooking the fact that again the educational system has fallen into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists (“Charley Rose” 10.15.01). Not surprisingly, public outrage in Pakistan exploded as soon as the bombing began. After several days of bloody protest in the streets, a general strike was called on the day of Colin Powell’s visit; tens of thousands of shops remained closed. A police officer in Jacobabad turned to a reporter, exclaiming, “I beseech America to stop the bombings. These will tear our country apart” (LA Times l0.15.01, p. 3). Indeed there is a real possibility Pakistan could come apart, that Musharraf could lose control of the military, raising some very, very troubling issues. Barely able to control his own ranks, Musharraf has already had to fire several of the officers who brought him to power in 1999. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physicist in Islamabad, put a shaky finger on the grave danger: should there be a split in Pakistan’s military as the result of the U.S. intervention, “one doesn’t want to ponder the possibilities” (Wall Street Journal 10.4.01). The possibilities, of course, include a scenario where an angry Islamic Fundamentalist government could take charge of about 20 nuclear weapons. This risk of this outcome has received scant coverage from the American media, and has remained unmentioned by Bush administration officials. In a democracy that was working well, surely there would have been public debate about the wisdom of running this risk. V. Other Faustian Bargains and Betrayals of Stated Ideals:The costs of mustering a coalition to provide the appearance of legitimacy for the intervention in Afghanistan has involved innumerable other compromises of principle and weapons deals that could, like the Stinger missiles in Afghanistan, come back to haunt the U.S. In country after country, weapons
were traded for military favors; at this point, only a few of these deals
have been made public. In Iran and Syria, nations long hostile to the U.S.,
bans were lifted on imports of U.S. weapons. Desperate for staging areas,
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld offered Sultan Qaboos of Oman a sweetheart
U.S. arms deal, one including F-16 fighters, in exchange for use of Oman’s
military bases (DuffyTime p.34). Arms and human rights sanctions against
communist China were also relaxed in deals that could, given the tensions
between China and Taiwan, have serious ramifications for decades to come.
The result of all this wheeling and dealing will be a more heavily armed
and thus more dangerous future world.
Nor are these just the perceptions of Princeton professors, for they are also shared by prominent military professionals. Retired Admiral Eugene Carroll of the Center for Defense Information takes a similar stand: “Using military power will only exacerbate the sense of aggrievement and antagonism felt by many marginalized people around the world. We need to examine at the roots of terrorism, which reach into oppression, poverty, and despair.” Even a Saudi oilman sees the situation more clearly than most of this country’s policy makers: “It’s time to start facing the truth. The war was declared by bin Laden, but there are thousands of bin Ladens. They are setting the game--the agenda . . . . This fabulous military machine you have is useless” (Hersh 37). Only two weeks before Sept. 11, President Bush warned the Israelis and the Palestinians that “violence only begets more violence.” Since that time, he seems to have forgotten these words of wisdom. VII. Better Routes to Long-Range National Security: As international law expert Falk explains, the terrorists could be handled legally and charged with crimes against humanity: “A tribunal could be constituted under the authority of the United Nations, and a fair trial could then be held that would avoid war and the ensuring pain, destruction, and associated costs. The narrative of apocalyptic terrorism could then be laid before the world much as the crimes of Nazism were bared in Nuremberg” (“Ends and Means” p.12). Pervez Hoodbhoy, the physicist from Pakistan, invites Americans to take a hard look at their government’s actions, adding an appeal to the humanitarian feelings among Americans which once led America to sponsor the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe: “If the lesson is that America needs to assert its military might, then the future will be as grim as can be….Ultimately, the security of the United States lies in its re-engaging with the people of the world, especially with those it has previously harmed” (Black Tuesday: The View from Islamabad, 9.16.01). To achieve real long-term security, then, the United States must promote many of the very policies that it has so long opposed. For starters, it should support a strong United Nations with an active World Court, act multilaterally and diplomatically more often than unilaterally and militarily, establish a balanced policy between the Israelis and the Palestinians, redirect corporate globalization toward the common good, and reduce its insatiable thirst for oil. Paul W. Rea, Ph.D., a writer and researcher from the Bay Area, may be contacted at <prea@stmarys-ca.edu> Sources -Barber, Benjamin. Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World. New York: Ballantine, 1995. -Chomsky, Noam. Fateful Triangle. Revised Edition. Boston: South End Press, 1999. -Duffy, Michael. “War on All Fronts.” Time 158. 17 (October 15, 2001): 30-27. -Falk, Richard. “A Just Response.” The Nation 273.10 (October 8, 2001): 11-15. “Ends and Means: Defining A Just War.” The Nation 273.23 (October 29, 2001): 11-15. -Hersh, Seymour. “King’s Ransom.” The New Yorker (October 22, 2001): 35-39. -Hitchens, Christopher. “Blaming bin Laden First.” The Nation 273.12 (October 22, 2001): 9. -Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of the American Empire. New York:Holt/Owl, 2000. -Lapham, Lewis. “The American Rome: On the Theory of Virtuous Empire.” Harper’s 303.185 (2001): 31-38. -Robbins, Carla Ann. “In Attack on Terrorism U.S. Has Early Priority Managing Its Message.” The Wall Street Journal CCXXXVIII. 67 (October 4, 2001): A1 and A4. -Said, Edward W. “The Clash of Ignorance.”The Nation 273.12 (October 22, 2001): 11-13. -Sontag, Susan. “Tuesday, And After.” The New Yorker September 24, 2001, 32. -Sheer, Robert. “They’re Rich, They’re Spoiled, They’re Supporting Terrorists.” Los Angeles Times October 16, 2001. -Sudetic, Chuck. “The Betrayal of Basra.” Mother Jones (November/December 2001): 46-51, 90-92. -Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States:1492-Present. New York:HarperPerennial, 1999. |
